It speaks of degrees of faith, the lack of faith, the necessity of faith. Standing beside the disciples, whose attempts to heal the epileptic boy had failed, we hear the taunts of the onlookers who have gathered to see what is happening. The distraught father of the boy kneels before Jesus, begging for a cure.
We turn our eyes back to the disciples. Why did they fail? With them we re-live the early days of their mission, the successful healings, the initial sense of personal inadequacy and of total dependence on the power of Jesus, and the wonder of it working in and through them.
Latterly, though, a certain complacency, perhaps even a sense of personal pride in what they have accomplished, has begun to creep in. It is as if they had lost sight of their Lord and turned inwards on themselves. Jesus brands the onlookers as a faithless and perverse generation, and when the disciples asks why they failed, he replies, ‘Because of your little faith.’
How amazing is it that the father had faith but the disciples, the closest followers that Jesus had, could not heal the boy. Notice how Jesus felt about their lack of faith, he is distressed that their faith had not grown enough to do the work that he had sent them out to do. He just sent them out and enpowered them in Matthew 10 he told them: Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.As you go, preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.'Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.
I am sure that he is patiently waiting for me to exercise my faith so that I can be more useful for his kingdom. We all must fall so far short of our potential for kingdom work just because we don't have faith that is at least the size of a mustard seed. Want to know how to increase your faith? Jesus tells us that increasing our faith can be done through prayer and fasting but it also takes the Holy Spirit working within us to empower us.
Chile Habanero Marmalade……talking about FAITH!
Some believe that marmalades are just another kind of fruit preserve and only use them on biscuits or toast. Folks from England think of marmalade as traditionally being made only from Seville oranges, but nothing can be called a marmalade unless it is made from a citrus fruit. I guess the word about that never quite made it to the New World because nowadays people will make a marmalade out of just about anything. In fact, marmalades can be one of our most creative recipe ingredients, especially in meat dishes.
This week, I discovered that the Mayan ladies of Izamal have their own marmalade brand, Mermelada Kumán.Everything they produce is 100% natural and they have a whole host of marmalades in my retail grocery stores now, including marmalades made from papaya, mango, coconut, pitahaya and tomatoes. Mermelada de Chile Habanero Kumán is their newest creation and is creating quite a stir both in Yucatan and abroad.
Checking with my local Yucatecan experts, I have learned that turning a fruit into a jam or marmalade is not traditional in the Yucatan. True Yucatecans know that there is always one or more delicious fruits in season, and saving one or the other for later just meant not being able to eat enough of what was in season later. The idea of marmalades and preserves came to the Yucatan with the Lebanese [large community here], who would buy a fruit when it was freshest and cheapest and preserve some of it for later when it might get more expensive. Yucatecans traditionally would add sugar to fruits like nance, ciruelas (plums), ziricotes, cocoyol and papayas, but only to eat them on the spot as a delicious dulce (sweet). Only recently have foods like that been preserved in bottles for sale.
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